With 100% English Ancestry, I thought it might be really difficult to trace my ancestors back in England from Canada. Only my mother, her father and his mother were born in Canada. This Blog will talk about researching my English ancestors from Canada but also the ancestors of our son in law whose families stretch back far into Colonial French Canada. My one name study of Blake and of Pincombe also dominate my blog these days.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Looking at I2a y DNA haplogroup

I extracted 72 I2a samples from the British Isles study at FT DNA and discovered that, as I had initially thought, most of them have the United Kingdom as their ancestral location. The most recent thought expressed by Ken Nordvedt who is really the most knowledgeable on the I yDNA haplogroup in the DNA newsgroup is that the I2a is an ancient "British Isles" haplogroup and thus referring to all of the Islands that comprise that group. Looking at the 72 samples there are: 25 England, 12 Ireland, 7 Scotland, 9 United Kingdom, 15 Unknown, 1 Wales, 1 Belgium, 1 Germany and 1 Croatia. Thus yielding 69 out of 72 as being of the "British Isles."

I thought I could just exclude the result from Belgium, Croatia and Germany but surprisingly two other results in the "British Isles" belong to this same grouping so I decided to leave them in.

Frequency of occurrence of alleles may be interesting to look at with regard to these values obtained for I2a.

393 - 13 is the value found most commonly with 14 being the next most common and 15 the fourth most common

390 - 24 is the value found most commonly with 23 being the next most common, then 25 is the third most common, 22 the fourth most common and 21 the fifth most common

19 - the most common found value is not listed in this grouping (14), the next most common is 15, the third most common is 16 and 17 is the fifth most common

391 - 10 is the value found most commonly and 11 is the second most commonly found value

388 - 12 is the most commonly found value, the next most common is 14, the third most common is 13, the fourth most common is 15, 11 is the seventh most commonly found value and 9 is the ninth most commonly found value.

That is looking at the world population however and I need to find the particular statistics for I2 haplogroup and Whit Athey in his paper: Haplogroup prediction from Y-STR values using an allele-frequency approach, Journal of Genetic Genealogy 1: 1-7, 2005 does have a table looking at R1b. A second paper by the same author: Haplogroup prediction from y-str values using a Bayesian-Allele-Frequency approach, Journal of Genetic Genealogy 2:34-39, 2006 also looks at this question with respect to I1. Nomenclature has moved on and I2a originally belonged to I1.

Looking at 393 - 13 was most commonly found with 14 being second, 12 being third, and 15 being fourth

Looking at 390 - 22 was most commonly found, followed by 23 as second, 24 as third, 21 as fourth and 25 as fifth

No particular surprises there other than 25 as a value for 390 being commoner looking at the world data.

Can I learn anything more about I2a from these allele values? One item I did note was that all the I2a2b were from the British Isles (with one exception - one is unknown but the name is a Yorkshire one). Six people have tested their subclade only in the 72. The predicted break is L161+ and if positive directs you towards the British Isles. Ken Nordvedt shows this group of P37.2 + individuals coming out from the Balkans heading north towards present day Poland where this group divides with L161 + (heading towards the British Isles) and L147+ towards Eastern Europe. Looking at the results verifies this chart which can be found:

More people testing their deep clade results will aid in analyzing this haplogroup.

Looking at the much larger group I2a with a sample size of 403 but which will also include potential I2a1, I2a2, and I2a3 since they haven't had their deep clade test the resting spot is of course much more widespread. However there are 99 samples that are I2a2 and I2a2b (with 25 having tested L161 +).

I will play with the data a little more and see the locations for the other sets of data and the large I2a set. I will look at the alleles for the larger group that are just I2a. There are 304 members in the I2a study who have not done further subclade studies so that they could potentially belong to I2a1, I2a2 or I2a3 and looking at their country of origin (user generated) Unknown is a rather large section being 93 members, followed by the British Isles (England 34, Ireland 33, Northern Ireland 1, Scotland 16, Wales 2, United Kingdom 12) 98 members, Western Europe 56, Eastern Europe 55 and the remaining members have United States and Canada (3). The British Isles again predominates but this could also be the bias of more people testing who have known British Isles heritage or continue to live in the British Isles. Until members of this group test their subclade and have more knowledge on their ancestral "resting spot" it would be difficult to say much more about I2a2b other than it does appear to be a "British Isles" group predominantly. Ken Nordvedt on his chart has the arrowhead in Ireland but one would imagine that individuals would have stopped along the way which is perhaps why the numbers for Germany and Poland are also substantial.

The Blood of the Isles database by Bryan Sykes also gives an interesting story on I. There are 225 entries for I with I2a having 150 of these entries. Looking at my paternal line and the entries close by (19 390 391 392 393):

would seem to imply that perhaps my ancestors lived in Northern England/Northumbria at some time although on paper I know that my Blake line is found at Andover (or within 2 miles of that city) from the late 1400s on. It does cause one to think carefully though looking at the Blake family which is very diverse in England and already the study has more than five different haplogroups for this surname. Interestingly if you look at Ken Nordvedt's latest map of migration for I2a2b the arrow leads one across from Poland through Doggerland into the north of England and thence on to Ireland. Always interesting these thoughts on the migratory path of the various haplogroups. It is simply impossible to actually trace on paper back thousands of years but the answer to our early history does lie in our genes. Although my matches on just 5 markers are rather interesting my best overall match is with the London entry where the match is 8/10 markers. As it turns out a portion of the Andover family does end up in the London area by the end of the 1600s.

6 comments:

Hello. I just found out I am Y-DNA Haplogroup I2a, and all of my Paternal male-line has been based in Yorkshire as far back as anyone can trace, and with an original English surname of Brooks. From my research, my I2a doesn't appear to be greatly connected to, say the Vikings, nor the Anglo-Saxons, nor the Britons. These were vastly R1b and I1, I'm aware. Is the best understanding that then my male-line is of descent from very old, perhaps Pre-Celtic occupants of Britain? Thank you very much.

BritainsDNA call them the "Deer-Hunters" which likely means that they were a nomad hunter-gatherer society which dates back to pre-historic Britain. Since your line is in Yorkshire then possibly they came from somewhere else in England to Yorkshire following the "harrying of the north" by William the Conqueror. Good luck with your research. Elizabeth Kipp

Thank you very much. I will say, that on my results, it does say I2a characterised by SNP P37.2. Technically, Isles still fulls under the category of P37.2, correct? Isles isn't a separate Subclade without P37.2?

Thank you so much. I'm reposting just to comment that after an analysis of my Y SNPs, it appears I'm I2a-Western as opposed to I2a-Isles. Apparently, both are Mesolithic-Neolithic indigenous European, and both Pre-Celtic and Pre-Germanic, but whereas I2a-Isles is specifically of British origin, my I2a-Western can be found across both Britain and northwestern Continental Europe. As far as specific cultures this can be tied to in England, I've found 0% information. That is, if it's thought to be Pre-Celtic in Britain and then absorbed into the later Brythonic culture, as was the case with I2a-Isles, or whether it was Pre-Germanic on the Continent and then introduced to Britain by Anglo-Saxons whose ancestors had absorbed remaining I2as in their regions, there seems to be no info on.

Actually that would fit in well with the Anglo-Saxon migrations from the Continent and especially peoples located along the east side of England. Fascinating information to be gleaned from looking at the yDNA and the mtDNA in terms of deep ancestry. The atDNA is also interesting and I have had a few good connections with cousins. Thank you for your comments.